QC court stops sale of Boracay property

Boulevard Holdings Inc. (BHI) on Monday said it secured a suspension order on the foreclosure sale of a Boracay beachfront property.

The property scheduled for auction on Monday, supposedly to satisfy the debt of a former owner to creditor Ambassador Amable Aguiluz.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, BHI told its shareholders that Judge Edgardo Bellosillo of the Regional Trial Court (RTC) of Quezon City has cancelled the auction sale of the 1, 477-sqm. property.

Aguiluz, through property firm Lonavia Properties, supposedly initiated the foreclosure sale to satisfy the monetary obligation of Mila Yap, former owner of the disputed property and the same person who sold the Boracay property to Panlilio-led company, BHI.

Aguiluz is the country’s special envoy to the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Since the property is also the subject of a pending case in a Makati City RTC, where the injunctive order of the Court of Appeals (CA) is the subject of pending petition before the Supreme Court, the Quezon City court has decided to cancel the auction sale of the Boracay property, according to a March 4, 2016 order of the Quezon city RTC.

The property was supposed to be auctioned-off on Monday, but the BHI legal counsel was able to convince the Quezon City court to cancel the foreclosure sale.

“For this Court to allow the Sheriff’s sale to proceed as scheduled on March 7, 2016 would render moot and academic whatever the outcome of the pending petition at the Supreme Court,” the court said.

Although BHI neither applied for a temporary restraining order nor a writ of preliminary injunction has been issued by a higher court to stop the sale, the Quezon City court in applying the rule of “judicial courtesy,” as established in the case of Eternal Gardens versus CA and reiterated in the case of Go et al., versus Abrogar, the Quezon City court said it was justified in suspending the auction sale.

“As there is a strong probability that the outcome of the pending petition at the Supreme Court would be considered moot and academic, should it decide to proceed with the auction sale,” the court noted.

Instead, the court ordered plaintiff Lonavia Properties, which is owned by Aguiluz, to go after the other properties of Mila Yap and spare the Boracay property from being sold by way of auction proceedings.

“In fact, the Plaintiff [Lonavia Properties] can go after the other property of the defendant [Mila Yap] which is the subject of the transaction of this case,” it said.

The court said it was confused why the sheriff opted to levy the Boracay property, which is subject of another case in the Makati City RTC, when there are other properties held by Yap for auction.

The disputed property was awarded by a Makati City RTC to the Panlilio family-led company in 2008 after it was able to prove that it bought and fully paid for the property from Yap.

However, Yap, despite knowing the finality of such court order, mortgaged the same property to Aguiluz for P74 million, and has been levied for foreclosure sale to cover Yap’s debt.

1 Comment

It seems that the judge noted that the said property was still contested based on the order of the Court of Appeals, the ongoing trial at the Makati RTC 146 and the pending petition of BHI in the Supreme Court. But it still stands that the Provincial Assessor of Aklan denied issuing the FHI Tax Declaration and provided no authority to the Municipal Assessor to do so in his behalf. So who is the owner remains the big question in this case.https://newsmeph.wordpress.com/2016/03/03/fake-fridays-boracay-tax-declaration-documents-presented/